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Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment
Traditionally, Protestant theology between Luther's early reforming career and the dawn of the Enlightenment has been seen in terms of decline and fall into the wastelands of rationalism and scholastic speculation. In this volume a number of scholars question such an interpretation. The editors argue that the development of Post-Reformation Protestantism can only be understood when a proper historical model of doctrinal change is adopted. This historical concern underlies the subsequent studies of theologians such as Calvin, Beza, Olevian, Baxter and the two Turrentini. The result is a significantly different reading of the development of Protestant Orthodoxy, one which both challenges the older scholarly interpretations and cliches about the relationship of Protestantism to, among other things, scholasticism and rationalism, and which demonstrates the fruitfulness of the new, historical approach. D. V. N. Bagchi, David C. Steinmetz, Richard A. Muller, Frank A. James III, John L. Farthing, Lyle D. Bierma, R. Scott Clark, Donald Sinnema, Paul R. Schaefer, W. Robert Godfrey, Carl R. Trueman, Philip G. Ryken, John E. Platt, Joel R. Beeke, James T. Dennison Jr., Martin I. Klauber, Lowell C. Green, and David P. Scaer.
372 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1969
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About the author
Carl R. Trueman
95 books531 followersCarl R. Trueman (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is the Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary and pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He was editor of Themelios for nine years, has authored or edited more than a dozen books, and has contributed to multiple publications including the Dictionary of Historical Theology and The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology.
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February 19, 2018
The Steinmetz was the best. From the Steinmetz:
19 “The Sentences of Peter Lombard represented a shift in form and structure from patristic theology. Lombard organized theology into topics and arranged his sources according to the themes they discussed. Organizing theology according to topics took what had been an unstructured and nearly unmanageable body of early Christian theology preserved in sermons, letters and essays, gave it a coherent structure, and, by doing so, made it easier to teach to beginning students in a classroom setting. Ordering theology by topic also uncovered unexpected disagreements, some real and some only apparent, among early Christian Fathers. By doing so, it forced Christian theologians to face the antinomies and tensions in their own tradition. They could no longer assume that earlier authorities spoke with one unified voice. The existence of undeniable differences compelled them to make discriminating judgments and to seek for a resolution of what they regarded as only apparent contradictions.”
This paragraph set so many things straight for me. It brings a whole lot of loose ends together. It is worth the whole essay, nay, the whole book in which it is found.
21 “Clear thinking about theological issues was an important skill for a university don to cultivate. It was an equally important skill for a bishop, entrusted with the care of souls.”
23 “It is probably never possible or even desirable for Christian theologians to become overly loyal to a single philosopher, since the odd shape of the Christian faith forces a kind of philosophical eclecticism on its serious practitioners. No philosophy—not the philosophy of Aristotle or Plato or Kant or Hegel or Kierkegaard—is exactly cut to the shape of divine revelation.”
A puzzling statement if you think about it. “Probably never possible” is an odd way to put it. How can it not be possible in his view, so why ‘probably’? And what about going on to speak of ‘desirable’? If it were desirable, then wouldn’t it be possible? If it were desirable, then it ought to be possible. So I find the language is convoluted and conflicted.
And what is this metaphor of ‘odd shape’? I don’t think it an odd shape of the Christian faith that forces things, it is the nature of our fundamental commitments. We are Christians before anything else. But these commitments are in no way the commitment any of these philosophers would require of us, and therefore it is at the least pointless, at worst unclear to speak this way. I’m sure his overall point is right, I just find it strange that he expresses an uncontroversial point in such a tangled way.
25 “Calvin set out to write a theology that was wholly exegetical. If he did not entirely succeed (and no-one who professes the doctrine of the Trinity can entirely succeed), it was not for lack of resolution. Like many early Protestants he was in the grip of an exegetical optimism that proved not altogether workable in practice.”
It had to be said. Steinmetz said it.
30 “The Calvinist ideal was to place a learned glossator in every pulpit. The local parish became less a sacred space for the celebration of religious mysteries than an assembly room for the theological education of the laity.”
“In short, the relationship of Calvin to scholasticism is a good deal more complicated than we might first have thought. If we raise only the limited question of Calvin’s attitude towards scholasticism in the late medieval church, we can say that Calvin despised it, respected it, borrowed from it, misrepresented it, and emulated it.”
With varying proportions of each attitude, I think that for every Reformer we can provide a similar mash bill when it comes to his attitude toward scholasticism.
19 “The Sentences of Peter Lombard represented a shift in form and structure from patristic theology. Lombard organized theology into topics and arranged his sources according to the themes they discussed. Organizing theology according to topics took what had been an unstructured and nearly unmanageable body of early Christian theology preserved in sermons, letters and essays, gave it a coherent structure, and, by doing so, made it easier to teach to beginning students in a classroom setting. Ordering theology by topic also uncovered unexpected disagreements, some real and some only apparent, among early Christian Fathers. By doing so, it forced Christian theologians to face the antinomies and tensions in their own tradition. They could no longer assume that earlier authorities spoke with one unified voice. The existence of undeniable differences compelled them to make discriminating judgments and to seek for a resolution of what they regarded as only apparent contradictions.”
This paragraph set so many things straight for me. It brings a whole lot of loose ends together. It is worth the whole essay, nay, the whole book in which it is found.
21 “Clear thinking about theological issues was an important skill for a university don to cultivate. It was an equally important skill for a bishop, entrusted with the care of souls.”
23 “It is probably never possible or even desirable for Christian theologians to become overly loyal to a single philosopher, since the odd shape of the Christian faith forces a kind of philosophical eclecticism on its serious practitioners. No philosophy—not the philosophy of Aristotle or Plato or Kant or Hegel or Kierkegaard—is exactly cut to the shape of divine revelation.”
A puzzling statement if you think about it. “Probably never possible” is an odd way to put it. How can it not be possible in his view, so why ‘probably’? And what about going on to speak of ‘desirable’? If it were desirable, then wouldn’t it be possible? If it were desirable, then it ought to be possible. So I find the language is convoluted and conflicted.
And what is this metaphor of ‘odd shape’? I don’t think it an odd shape of the Christian faith that forces things, it is the nature of our fundamental commitments. We are Christians before anything else. But these commitments are in no way the commitment any of these philosophers would require of us, and therefore it is at the least pointless, at worst unclear to speak this way. I’m sure his overall point is right, I just find it strange that he expresses an uncontroversial point in such a tangled way.
25 “Calvin set out to write a theology that was wholly exegetical. If he did not entirely succeed (and no-one who professes the doctrine of the Trinity can entirely succeed), it was not for lack of resolution. Like many early Protestants he was in the grip of an exegetical optimism that proved not altogether workable in practice.”
It had to be said. Steinmetz said it.
30 “The Calvinist ideal was to place a learned glossator in every pulpit. The local parish became less a sacred space for the celebration of religious mysteries than an assembly room for the theological education of the laity.”
“In short, the relationship of Calvin to scholasticism is a good deal more complicated than we might first have thought. If we raise only the limited question of Calvin’s attitude towards scholasticism in the late medieval church, we can say that Calvin despised it, respected it, borrowed from it, misrepresented it, and emulated it.”
With varying proportions of each attitude, I think that for every Reformer we can provide a similar mash bill when it comes to his attitude toward scholasticism.
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